If I hear one more person tell me to ‘engage more’ or ‘repurpose my content’ like a desperate salesman flogging plastic junk at a car boot sale, I may actually combust. The internet is full of writers who claim to have cracked the code—tripled their audience overnight, made a six-figure income from Substack, gone viral on TikTok by reading their own poetry while making tea. Meanwhile, the rest of us are left screaming into the void, wondering if we were foolish to think good writing still matters.
The problem with writing advice in the digital age is that it’s largely regurgitated nonsense. The same echo chamber of self-proclaimed experts, many of whom have never written anything of note, yet have mastered the art of selling the illusion of success. They tell you to ‘just write every day’ as if words were an obedient tap, ready to flow at will. They push the ‘find your niche’ mantra, as if true creativity can be condensed into a single marketable box. And my personal favourite—‘engage more!’ Because nothing screams literary success like spending your days replying to vapid comments on a post about the importance of a morning routine.
Let’s be honest—real writing is a slow, often thankless pursuit. It’s not a formula or a strategy; it’s a compulsion, a deeply embedded need to tell stories, to unravel the world through words. It doesn’t fit neatly into an algorithm. It doesn’t promise virality. It certainly doesn’t guarantee financial success. But the contemporary writing landscape doesn’t reward good writing. It rewards visibility, controversy, and the ability to churn out clickbait disguised as wisdom. And therein lies the scam.
Stephen King, in his book On Writing, gives the most honest advice any writer will ever hear: ‘Just write.’ Not ‘monetise your brand,’ not ‘leverage TikTok for audience growth.’ Just write. And yet, how many writers have been led down the treacherous path of vanity presses, expensive Amazon advertising, or online courses that promise to ‘unlock the secrets of bestseller status’?
I know the cost of chasing the dream all too well. Since 2019, I have poured over £20,000 into my publishing pursuits, only to learn the hard way that the industry—whether traditional or self-published—is flooded with bad actors. There are those who prey on desperate authors, promising them the golden ticket to literary success. The truth? If you are paying a publisher to spring your book, you are being scammed. That’s not publishing. That’s business. And it is a business built on the exploitation of the hopeful.
I was sold the dream, too. I was promised that my book would change my life. That the investment would be worth it. That this was the step I needed to take to get my story into the world. And the result? Nothing but grief. Money lost. Time wasted. And a bitter realisation that the space is so oversaturated that unless your book either hits the cultural zeitgeist or you funnel an ungodly sum into Amazon’s algorithm, your chances of breaking through are infinitesimally small.
Take Harvester, my own dark and gripping story. Those who have read it, those who have truly sat with its pages, have been enthralled. And yet, the number of books sold is dismally depressing. Not because it isn’t worthy, not because it lacks merit, but because the marketplace does not reward literary merit—it rewards noise. And if you aren’t making enough of it, you are invisible.
Publishing, both traditional and self-publishing, is no longer about talent. It is about marketing, timing, and sheer dumb luck. The myth of the overnight success is precisely that—a myth. For every author who makes it, there are thousands who write with equal passion, equal skill, and yet remain unread. It is not for lack of effort. It is not for lack of quality. It is simply the cold, hard nature of an industry that values commercial viability over literary depth.
So where does that leave us? Do we throw in the towel? Surrender to the algorithms and rewrite our souls into something more marketable? No. Because at the heart of it all, we are still writers. And writers write—not for fame, not for fortune, but because the words won’t let us rest.
The only real advice worth taking? Write the damn thing. Ignore the noise. And brace yourself for the long haul, because the road is brutal. But for those who truly love the craft, there is no other path worth walking.
Throughout history, writers have faced obscurity, their words relegated to the shadows of forgotten corridors. In the Library of Alexandria, scribes toiled in the dim recesses, scratching away on papyri, their minds burdened with the weight of knowledge, their hands ink-stained and calloused. They were the unseen architects of the literary world, chronicling the philosophies and histories that shaped civilisations, only for their words to be consumed by flames when the library was destroyed. They wrote not for fame, nor for accolades, but because the act of writing itself was an inescapable force.
Oscar Wilde, a man whose wit and literary genius still reverberate through time, also wrestled with the reason behind writing. He wrote that literature is an act of rebellion, a seduction, a means of capturing beauty and wielding truth. Writers have always written from the margins, crafting words in obscurity, knowing that most will never be recognised. And yet they write anyway, driven by an inescapable force that refuses to be silenced.
The world is not kind to writers, but it never has been. The flames that consumed the Library of Alexandria were not the first, nor the last, to threaten the written word. Yet literature persists, because writers persist. So, let us continue. Let us write in the shadows, in the forgotten spaces, for those who may one day stumble upon our words and find themselves changed by them. That, after all, is the true essence of writing.
Have you been burned by the industry? Have you tried to play the game only to find it rigged against you? Drop your war stories in the comments—I want to hear them.
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